Jobs report shows that hiring was weak in March
People looking for jobs wait in line to speak with potential employers at the Brooklyn Job Fair on April 13, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Thousands attended the event which featured nearly 80 employers in a variety of professions.
Looking for a new job? Now's probably not a good time: the Labor Department just released its weakest jobs report since June 2012. The unemployment rate did dip to 7.6 percent from 7.7 percent, but only because more people dropped out of the labor force.
Employers hired just 88,000 people in March, well below the 200,000 new jobs that are necessary for the economy to grow.
"The US economy just hit a major speed bump," Marcus Bullus, trading director at MB Capital in London, told Reuters. The weakness appears in part to be due to higher tax rates that went into effect in January, according to Reuters.
More from GlobalPost: Furloughs and sequestration: Who will suffer?
“I don’t think we have to be overly worried, but we have to trim our expectations a bit," Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews told the Boston Herald.
The weak numbers comes just as news broke that Obama will introduce a budget with cuts to social security and medicare, along with fewer tax increases. The document is the result of a compromise offer that Obama had made to House Speaker John A. Boehner last December, the Washington Post reported. A senior White House official admitted that it's not Obama's "ideal policy."
The story you just read is available for free because thousands of listeners and readers like you generously support our nonprofit newsroom. Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you: We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll get us one step closer to our goal of raising $25,000 by June 14. We need your help now more than ever!